By Mia Huang
For how long can one stay in the same apartment
before its scrapes and stains become too much to bear?
Walls stand as a lonely observer,
watching over ebbing emotions.
Screams fade into hoarse whispers,
names loosely echoing between bricks.
If the walls spoke,
what stories would they tell?
The hunter-green accent wall camouflages splatters of infidelity,
mulberry crayon smears the outgrowth of love.
Shielded by the cannoli cream walls,
the wife slept with a boning knife under her pillow,
the son lay with a wet towel smothering his face,
and the daughter perched on the foot of her bed, trying to
justify their father’s departure, unaware of the transfiguring grief,
tip-toeing into agony and resentment.
Eventually, the mother cannot bare the empty toothbrush holder.
The son who finds comfort in chaos stares at the frigid hearth.
The tranquility becomes suffocating
without the football reporter’s screeches and the
slamming wine cabinet.
A prominent actor moves in,
and while he tours the world,
the living room floor lamp is left on.
The spinner wheels on his luggage roll by his building,
he watches the warm light shine through the living room window,
longing for someone to be there with a pair of open arms,
longing for a sound apart from his own footsteps.
Eventually, the lightbulb burns out,
the chanting crowd in the daytime,
and the opaque lampshade becomes all too much.
A newlywed couple moves in,
sprinkling the walls with pastel paint and laughter.
The music box sits in the nursery,
with its golden edges rubbed off,
passed down from the mother’s mother,
waiting for the unborn baby.
A cluster of blood marks the end of a fever dream,
the door to the nursery locks,
unworn baby clothes are regifted
in a grey cardboard box.
Eventually, that lavender door
becomes a never-healing scar,
a living mockery of happiness.
They scrape off the paint,
leaving behind the vintage music box,
driving off in two directions.
Empty apartments,
vacant people.
